Although there was much of the positive customer-reviews-and-professional-reviews-can-coexist-in-happiness! talk, Charles brought perspective. Graff said, “The pace of news is accelerating. Is technology working against the long-form book essay?” Charles: “Yes.” Later, he talked about his need to review general interest titles rather than a lot of niche discoveries to get more clicks on their site–newspapers need to be general in order to survive. He foresees a future of big city dailies continuing to die as five large papers live and syndicate book reviews to other publications.

Fine emphasized the effort required to use and read user reviews, and he values the engagement that comes with it as well: “More speech is better speech.” Chandler and Fine both discussed the difficulties of maintaining integrity–avoiding conflicts of interest and keeping people who are getting paid to write good reviews at bay primarily by an algorithm that orders reviews.

I felt a general sense of naivety about the public’s understanding of what could jeopardize objectivity and the general ability to read critically. Everyone’s spouting criticism, and, we, as readers, are expected to read it with a critical eye? As Fine said, “There’s no time to indulge in all the great resources out there.” I wish there had been more librarians on the panel to say, “But what if that’s your job?”